ssively dangerous criminal had escaped jail and been seen to climb
the Embassy wall. He offered very generously to bring some men in and
capture you and take you away--with my permission, of course. He was
shocked when I declined."

"I can understand that," said Hoddan.

"By the way," said the ambassador. "Young men like yourself-- Is there a
girl involved in this?"

Hoddan considered.

"A girl's father," he acknowledged, "is the real complainant against
me."

"Does he complain," asked the ambassador, "because you want to marry
her, or because you don't?"

"Neither," Hoddan told him. "She hasn't quite decided that I'm worth
defying her rich father for."

"Good!" said the ambassador. "It can't be too bad a mess while a woman
is being really practical. I've checked your story. Allowing for
differences of viewpoint, it agrees with the official version. I've
ruled that you are a political refugee, and so entitled to sanctuary in
the Embassy. And that's that."

"Thank you, sir," said Hoddan.

"There's no question about the crime," observed the ambassador, "or that
it is primarily political. You proposed to improve a technical process
in a society which considers itself beyond improvement. If you'd
succeeded, the idea of change would have spread, people now poor would
have gotten rich, people now rich would have gotten poor, and you'd have
done what all governments are established to prevent. So you'll never be
able to walk the streets of this planet again in safety. You've scared
people."

"Yes, sir," said Hoddan. "It's been an unpleasant surprise to them, to
be scared."

The ambassador put the tips of his fingers together.

"Do you realize," he asked, "that the whole purpose of civilization is
to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a
culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called
its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening
unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good
Old Days?"

"I hadn't thought of it in just those words, sir--"

"It is one of the most-avoided facts of life," said the ambassador.
"Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an
organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the
insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.
And you have offended against everything that is the foundation of a
stable and orderly and damnably tedi